In Malawi, she banned the marriage camps in her region, and convinced the chiefs of fifty tribes to abandon traditions that encouraged early marriage. In 2015 she dismissed four regional tribal chiefs who continued the practice of child marriage despite the change of national law on the issue, and forbade their return to duty until they agreed to obey the law. She continued her work, speaking with various NGOs as well as meeting one-on-one with members of her tribe, mothers, teachers and religious leaders. She has successfully had early marriage prohibited in the country?s family law. Thus far she has 850 child marriages annulled, allowing child brides and husbands to continue their educations. This woman tribal chief working for children?s human and educational rights is also striving to overcome the economic difficulties that lead to early marriages. She is having a fund created to pay the tuition for daughters of poor families, and encouraging efforts to strengthen children?s bonds to school life.

Diyarbakır Bar Association

Established in Diyarbakır in 1927, and in the last thirty years in particular, it has emerged as one of the region?s most important civil society organizations. Between 1988 and 2002, it conducted work to collect information on cases of evacuation and burning of villages, torture, unsolved killings and forced disappearances, and enter them into a data base; and support families who were victims of violence by security forces and lawyers working on such cases. It raised awareness, drawing attention to the fact that many perpetrators and others responsible for these violations had gone unpunished. With its impartiality, its sensitivity to human rights issues, its opposition to all manner of violence no matter who employs it or for what reason, it stands as a role model in the region. At every opportunity, it underscores the supremacy of law and seeks the preservation of the principle of impartiality. It struggles for the efficient investigation of human rights violations, and fights determinedly to prevent cases being time-barred and the guilty going unpunished.

Atom Egoyan

Film director, writer, and producer. Exploring themes of alienation and isolation in his 16 feature-length films and TV programmes, he won many awards such as Cannes Film Festival and Genie Awards. His films have been presented in numerous retrospectives across the world, including a complete career overview at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, followed by similar events at the Filmoteca Espagnol in Madrid and the Museum of The Moving Image in New York. Egoyan is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America, the Directors Guild of Canada, the Writers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of Canada, and the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada, and honoured with the 2015 Governor Generals Performing Arts Award.

2017 INTERNATIONAL HRANT DINK AWARD JURY

Étienne Balibar

Marxist philosopher and writer. He started his education in 1960 at the Ecole Normal Supérieur, where he became a pupil of Louis Althusser. He pursued his studies on philosophy at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He taught epistemology, history of philosophy and political philosophy at various universities. He currently gives lectures on political theory at Nanterre and California universities. In his numerous books and articles, Balibar concentrates particularly on Marxist philosophy, philosophy of ethics and politics. The famous book entitled Reading Capital, co-authored by Althusser, is one of the most important works of him. Balibar is considered as one of the most significant representatives of French Marxist thought.

Christophe Deloire

Director General of Reporters without Borders. He graduated from the ESSEC [International Business School in Europe] in 1994. From 2008 to 2012, he directed the Journalism Education Center (CFJ) in Paris. He worked at numerous newspapers and TV channels, such as Arte and LCI. He also worked as an editor at Le Point weekly and the famous French publishing house, Flammarion. Conducting the leadership of the Reporters without Borders since 2012, Deloire works for establishing and defending the right of worldwide access to all public information.

Michel Marian

Philosopher, writer, and academician. He studied philosophy at the Paris Ecole Normale Supérieure. From 1992 to 2013, he taught public philosophy at Sciences Po Paris. He is a member of the committee of the review Esprit and Nouvelles d'Arménie, where he published many articles about the Armenian issue. He is a member and co-founder of the association Solidarité Franco-Arménienne (1983) and of the Collectif pour le rêve commun (2014). One of his main works, Dialogue sur le tabou arménien, is published in France in 2009 and translated into Turkish in 2011.

2017 INTERNATIONAL HRANT DINK AWARD JURY

Murathan Mungan

Poet, writer, and literary critic. He studied theatre at Ankara University, receiving his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He worked as a dramaturg at the Ankara State Theatre and Istanbul City Theatres. While working at city theatres, he organised annual festivals, presented and directed shows.
Mungan has produced many works, almost in all fields of literature. He published poems, stories, essays and critiques in numerous reviews and journals; wrote song lyrics. The shows adapted from his poems and stories were performed all over the world. As one of the most productive names of the Turkish language, Mungan is also known with his anthologies consisting of local and foreign writers stories.

Şirin Tekeli

Feminist, writer, translator, and activist. She received her undergraduate degree at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of Lausanne University. In 1967, she became the first female faculty member in the Political Science Chair of the Istanbul University. In 1978, she was the first who wrote the assistant professorship thesis on the political participation of women in Turkey. Since she thought that Council of Higher Education, designed after the 1980 coup detat, deprived the universities of scientific research, she ended up her 13-year academic life in 1981. She pursued her struggle at both theoretical and practical levels, intending to raise awareness for the feminist movement in Turkey. She made visible both women issues and feminist terminology by translating the foreign sources into Turkish. She became one of the most significant names of the feminist movement in Turkey.

Rakel Dink

She left her village in Anatolia for her education when she was nine, and the first place she came was the Armenian Childrens Camp of Tuzla in Istanbul She met Hrant Dink there and got married. They took over the management of the camp, which was later seized by the government. She is the president of the Hrant Dink Foundation